Unearth (The Bound Ones Book 3) Read online

  Now it was Sebastian’s turn. The witch next to him held up her bowl of water. “Water, you are life. You are the sweet nectar that we drink, the rich blood that flows through our veins. You give life to all of Earth’s creations. We honor you.” The water pooled up out of the bowl and swirled around playfully above their heads, then in an instant flattened and spread out infinitely to rain down a fine mist on everyone present. Sebastian was wearing the biggest smile as the crowd laughed and wiped the mist off their faces.

  Lastly, Earth was up. Rather than simply holding her pot out to the center of the circle as the others had, Lily’s witch turned around to face her and knelt in front of her, holding the pot up toward Lily. With her head bowed, she said, “Earth, you are the bringer of life. You are the ground beneath our feet, the trees that give us shelter and the food that nourishes us. You are home. We honor you.”

  Simultaneously turning pale white and blushing a bright rose red, Lily put her focus on the pot in front of her. Before their eyes, a tiny green sprout emerged from the dirt, quickly growing and stretching upward. In the length of a gasp, it had flourished into a full rose bush, sunset-peach blossoms exploding like fireworks.

  There was no laughter at this show of power, only silent veneration and awe. As Marcucio had said, Earth was the element they related to most. It explained why this meeting place was so covered over with vines and flowers. Phoenyx suddenly recalled the solitary potted plant outside of Sam’s house, how it had appeared to be the only well cared for thing in sight. True witches worshipped Earth, not dark gods that could steal your soul. How had the Four Corners strayed so far?

  “Thank you,” Marcucio’s voice broke the silence. He stepped into the circle, giving each of the Bound Ones a grateful and respectful look. “You have made this a celebration none of us will ever forget. Now, please feast with us!” And the crowd roared and dissolved the circle.

  Someone put a drink in Phoenyx’s hand, and they all fell into the merriment around them. Music played, a mix of jazz and something older, more spiritual and much more hypnotizing. As the witches began to dance, she spotted Marcucio and pushed her way through the dancers toward him.

  “Any sign of Sam?” she called out over the noise.

  “Not yet,” he said. “I have sent out a search party to find him. But in the meantime, dance, eat, drink, enjoy yourselves! From what I can tell, you’ve earned it. Sam may still show up before the night is over.”

  Someone pulled her arm and spun her into a familiar embrace against a wonderfully firm chest. “You heard the man,” Sebastian said. “Dance with me. And drink!” He held up his glass of wine to toast with her.

  She clinked her glass against his and took a swig, letting her mouth fill with the sweet red liquid, and then Sebastian lifted her up and spun her once again.

  After an hour of wine and being so teasingly close to Sebastian, she began to ache for him. She may be Fire incarnate, but Sebastian was the epitome of sexy, with his broad shoulders, firm chest, defined abs down the middle of his narrow waist. And let’s not forget that handsome face. His deep blue eyes shimmering in the candlelight, his skin flush from the wine and hot against her touch, all just fueled the fire kindling between her thighs. She had begun to doubt that Sam would show up, and if he did, she was sure that Ayanna and the others could handle it. Nothing but Sebastian seemed to matter at the moment, and she couldn’t resist any longer.

  As Sebastian swung her one last time, she drew in for a kiss. When he slowed, she deepened it, opening his mouth with her tongue and licking his seductively. She let only a fraction of her lust flow into him through their mouths, and a guttural moan escaped his throat, trapped by their kiss. The sound was so hungry, it fed the ache even more.

  She pulled her lips away from his reluctant mouth and trailed them along his cheek to nibble on his ear. “I want you now,” she whispered, slipping her hand down between his legs to rub against the hardness she found there.

  “Where?” he managed to say roughly.

  It was all she could do not to take him right there, in the middle of the dancing mob that might not even notice. But she painfully pushed away from him and took his hand to pull him through the thrashing bodies and out into the moonlit darkness, where she could do whatever she wanted to him with only the moon as their witness.

  “Rise and shine,” Marcucio’s voice invaded Phoenyx’s twilight hangover and woke her up.

  She rubbed her eyes and sat up on the cushy bench she and Sebastian had fallen asleep on. Marcucio handed her a steaming cup of something that smelled delicious, and she gratefully took it.

  Phoenyx looked around the courtyard to see Ayanna, Lily and Skylar slowly rousing as well. They had stayed the entire night in the hope that the search party would bring Sam, but when the search party did return around midnight, they were empty-handed.

  “Any word from Sam?” she asked Marcucio, who was still kneeling in front of her.

  He shook his head. “I’m afraid not. Is there any way he knew you were coming here to look for him?”

  Phoenyx shrugged. “We didn’t even know we were coming here. But, as powerful a witch as you say he is, maybe he sensed that we would.”

  “Sam isn’t the kind to follow his senses,” Marcucio said. “He’s very impulsive, he usually just acts. That’s part of the problem with his magic.”

  “Then he’s most likely already gone,” she said with a sigh.

  “What will you do now?” Marcucio asked.

  “Go after him, if we can,” she replied, uncertain of where to even start.

  “Please let me know when you find him,” he implored with a paternal frown. “Sam is like…a little brother to me. Keep him safe if you can.”

  She laughed at the seeming absurdity of that request—her, keep the most powerful witch in the world safe? With magic as unstable as his, she was worried about her own safety, and that of her friends. “I’ll try,” she said.

  He handed her a brown paper bag that she hadn’t noticed was sitting on the ground next to him, and for a split second, panic surged like a lightning strike with a flashback of the daily brown paper bags when she was a prisoner in the Four Corners’ dungeon. She took a deep relaxing breath and accepted the bag, the contents of which were comfortably warm.

  “Beignets,” he said. “From the best bakery in town. My breakfast of choice after a fun night.”

  “Thank you,” she said, opening the bag to see the powdered-sugar-covered pastries. “Thank you for everything.”

  “You and your friends are welcome any time, sincerely,” he said with a warm smile. “Now get yourselves sobered up and bring our boy back.”

  She smiled and nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  He patted her knee and then stood up and went to his room on the second floor.

  She nudged Sebastian awake as the others gathered around them. They all already had cups of the cappuccino Marcucio had given her, and Phoenyx passed the bag of pastries around to complete the breakfast. The group of them ate in silence as they oriented themselves and attempted to recover from the wine and dancing of the night before.

  “So, Sam was a no-show,” Sebastian began with a mouthful of pastry. “What do we do now?”

  “Our best option may just be to go to the burial site and wait them out,” Phoenyx proposed. “We can do everything in our power to stop them when they arrive.”

  “That sounds the most reasonable,” Skylar agreed, watching the steam rise from the mug of cappuccino in front of him. “Our chances of finding Sam any other way are slim to none. He has most likely already left town, so the airport would be a waste of time. If we go to the headquarters in Prague, we run the risk that they won’t bother going there at all. And I don’t know about you guys, but I’m get really tired of flying.”

  “Me, too,” Sebastian said, powdered sugar dusting the corners of his lips.

  “Where is the burial site, Lily?” Ayanna asked. “I know it’s been a ridiculously long time, and the landscape w
ould have undoubtedly changed, but do you have any idea where it might be?”

  “Actually, that’s easy,” Lily replied, bashfully and elegantly wiping powdered-sugar from the corners of her mouth with her index finger. “The funny thing is, we all know this place—it’s Stonehenge.”

  “Stonehenge!?” everyone asked in amazement.

  Lily nodded. “The villagers erected the stones there as a memorial to their king, and for a long time they went there to offer tributes and give prayers, and they even performed rituals there. That life in which you all left, that was the last life I spent there, so I don’t know how long the worship of his memory continued.”

  “I always suspected that they were the ones responsible for Stonehenge,” Ayanna said. “It was in a relatively close location to where the village was, but I never imagined it hid such a great secret.”

  “I always wanted to visit Stonehenge,” Skylar said. “Ironic that I will now have to go there to keep it from getting upturned.”

  “Wait, Stonehenge is near London, right?” Phoenyx said, wheels turning in her mind. “Ayanna, didn’t you tell me once that there was a Four Corners Lodge in London?”

  “Yes, that’s right,” Ayanna said, seeing where Phoenyx was going with this. “Vincent will most likely take Sam there first to prepare him for whatever spell he has to perform.”

  Sebastian swallowed and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, looking at Ayanna. “If there are members at this other lodge, they’ll know about us. You and Skylar were only able to wipe the memories of those in Prague. The Londoners will tell them about us, and we’ll be right back where we started.”

  Ayanna shook her head. “Almost all of the higher members in the entire order were in Prague when we were—I saw that in their system when we were in the security room—and they are the only members allowed to know the big secrets. If there were any stragglers who still know about the Bound Ones, they won’t be enough to convince everyone else about your existence, especially since we wiped their database clean of any links to you.”

  Sebastian shrugged. “Well, alright, that’s good to know. So now the plan is to go to the London Lodge and intercept Sam there?”

  “I think so,” Phoenyx affirmed. “That at least gives us a little more of a chance to stop them before they get ready to do the spell.”

  Skylar sighed and raised his mug. “To this being the last flight any of us has to take for a very long time.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” Phoenyx agreed, and they all clinked their mugs together.

  Phoenyx and her friends settled into their chairs on the plain as other passengers loaded in, and she hoped that the flight time would just fly by. Traveling so much in such a short time was starting to make her feel very old, and all she wanted to do was go back to her dorm room in L.A., curl up into a ball and sleep for three days straight. Forget classes, forget assignments, just be lazy. As it was, she had no idea what assignments she was missing right now. Though it felt like a month that they’d been away, she reminded herself that she had only missed a week of school, so hopefully her grades weren’t falling behind too much. Not like any of that really mattered compared to the possibility of the Shade King being released and taking over the world.

  She shrugged. She knew that her grade would be safe in at least one class—Ayanna’s Ancient History class. As Phoenyx thought about that, a question came to mind.

  “Ayanna, what’s become of your class since we’ve been gone?” Phoenyx asked Ayanna, who was sitting in the window seat to her left. Phoenyx imagined students showing up for class and raising questions with the administration about where their professor was and what would happen with their grades. She didn’t want Ayanna’s job to be put in jeopardy.

  “One of my T.A.s is giving the lectures,” Ayanna replied as she buckled her seatbelt. “My lectures are planned out for the entire semester, so no one will notice my absence.”

  “I would,” Phoenyx said. “Before I knew who you were, you were my favorite professor. You make your lectures fun and entertaining. I doubt your T.A.s will be able to live up to your example.”

  Ayanna gave her a distracted, half-hearted smile and said, “Thanks.”

  “What’s wrong?” Phoenyx asked.

  Ayanna sighed, staring forward at the back of the seat in front of her. “It’s looking less and less likely that we will get to Sam before the Four Corners brings this guy back. I don’t want us to run into this fight blindly. I think we have to remember him. And it has to start with me.”

  “You’re going to try to bring back the memories you made yourself forget?” Phoenyx asked.

  “I think I have to,” Ayanna said with a nod. “I’m not really sure how, but I assume it would work the same as trying to bring back other people’s memories. I’m just…afraid. I have been dealing in other people’s memories for a very long time, and I never thought I would be the type of person who would want me to make them forget something. I have been through so much, so many struggles and losses and broken hearts. For me to have made myself forget something, it must have been so painful… Phoenyx, I’m afraid to feel whatever it is I ran away from.”

  Phoenyx wasn’t sure what to say. Ayanna was the strongest person she knew, and it was rare that she ever needed comforting. So Phoenyx said the only thing she could. “I’m here for you. Whatever you need.” She took Ayanna’s hand and squeezed it.

  “I know you are,” Ayanna said with a real smile.

  The seatbelt light turned on and the captain announced their departure as the revving of the engines vibrated through the cabin. Then came the initial bumpy forward motion, speeding along the runway before they finally broke contact with the ground and ascended into the air. After a few minutes, the turbulence eased and all was smooth sailing—or flying, rather.

  “Alright, here goes nothing,” Ayanna said. She let go of Phoenyx’s hand and put her hands against her temples as she had done to Phoenyx hundreds of times. Phoenyx watched as Ayanna closed her eyes and concentrated for several long, quiet minutes, and then winced as undoubtedly the memories came flooding back.

  ***

  Ayanna

  Ayanna wasn’t sure what to expect. She had never done this with herself before, had never used her powers on herself to try to remember something forgotten, especially something she made herself forget. She followed the same steps she used on everyone else, focusing on the forgotten thing as she had instructed others to do countless times. Though she had seen the effects of remembering on others, she was completely unprepared for the rush when it hit her.

  Like a freight train, the crushing sorrow and regret crashed into her, even before all the memories came flowing in like an angry river. At first the heartache was stunning and overwhelming, but without context, leaving her confused and disoriented. She pushed the pain back so that she could focus on the memories as they came, and then suddenly she wasn’t watching them like a live stream on a television screen, but rather she was living them all over again.

  “Ayanna, look, I picked these flowers for you,” said a little boy, holding freshly plucked daffodils out toward her. He had short black hair and brown eyes, and the cutest little smile. Joran. He was her best friend.

  “Thank you, Joran, they’re beautiful,” her five-year-old self said, taking the flowers and deeply inhaling as she put them under her nose. Then she sneezed.

  “Sorry, Ayanna,” young Joran said. “Here,” and he pulled his sleeve down over his hand and wiped her nose with it.

  “Eww, gross!” she squealed, and they both laughed and ran off to play.

  They frolicked through the forest until they found two of their friends. One little boy was lying on the ground, unconscious, and the other was crying over him. The crying boy turned to look at them when he heard them approach.

  “I didn’t mean to,” he pleaded. “It was an accident. We were playing and I pushed him. His head fell on the rock and now he won’t wake up!”

  Little Ayanna and J
oran exchanged a glance, then went to examine their fallen friend. When Ayanna saw the gash in his skull that was spilling fresh blood, she gasped, covered her mouth and looked away.

  “Is he dead?” the little boy cried, his mouth set in a deep pout.

  “It’s okay,” Joran said, putting a reassuring hand on the crying boy’s shoulder. “I’ll fix it.”

  Ayanna had seen Joran resurrect dead birds and rodents before, but never a human. Joran put his hands on the dead boy and closed his eyes, and a moment later the boy’s eyes opened and he sat up.

  “What happened,” the revived boy asked, rubbing the slowly healing bump on his head.

  “You just fell, that’s all,” Joran shrugged and smiled.

  He gave a sideways glance to Ayanna and she knew what to do. She went to her crying friend and put her hands on his temples. Closing her eyes, she mentally told him to forget about accidentally killing his friend. Even though both boys were fine now, there was no reason for him to carry around the guilt of something that was just an accident.

  When she was done, the boy stopped crying and ran off to chase his friend as if nothing had happened. Ayanna smiled at Joran and took his hand.

  “That was good team work,” she said. “I didn’t know you could bring a human back from the dead.”

  “I didn’t either,” Joran admitted, “but I had to try. Who knows what our powers can do. I’m glad we get to explore them together.”

  “Me, too,” she said.